No secret plans to invade Canada, U.S. says, but that wasn’t always the case

U.S. say there are no current plans to invade Canada

In a routine U.S. State Department press briefing this week, a journalist asked if a recent meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Mexican foreign minister had concerned secret plans “to invade Canada.”

It was a joke, of course, and spokeswoman Victoria Nuland quickly laughed it off.

But while the U.S. military may no longer harbour such plans, it most certainly has marching orders in case its northern neighbour becomes a liability.

“I doubt there’s a plan to invade Canada, but there may be plans to take action in the event of certain circumstances,” said Canadian military historian Jack Granatstein.

There may be plans to take action in the event of certain circumstances

In April, for instance, a bomb threat was called in on a Korean Air Boeing 777 that had lifted off from Vancouver International Airport.

Within minutes, NORAD set two U.S. fighter jets to intercept the plane over Haida Gwaii and escort it to an air base on Vancouver Island.

The use of U.S. aircraft was routine — the nearest Canadian fighters were more than 1,000 kilometres away in Cold Lake, Alta.

“The U.S. may have contingency plans to assist the Canadian military with emergencies … but, given the nature of the Canada-U.S. defence alliance, the U.S. wouldn’t be planning anything involving fighting against the Canadian military,” wrote Philippe Lagassé, assistant professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa, in an email to the National Post.

In 2008, the two countries inked the Civil Assistance Plan, clearing the way for their militaries to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency.

If U.S. boots ever hit the streets of Vancouver or Toronto, “I expect we would be very pleased to see them, and vice versa,” said Mr. Granatstein.

Canada has fended off three U.S. invasions in its history — and, arguably, can credit its existence to fears of another.

The 1864 Charlottetown Conference, at which the idea of Confederation was first broached, was held in part to forge a defensive alliance against violence spilling over from the U.S. Civil War.

Canadian cities had been havens for Confederate terrorists and spies during the war, prompting William Seward, the U.S. secretary of state, to lobby president Abraham Lincoln to declare war on the British colonies.

In 1865, both men were targeted in an assassination plot spearheaded by John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer who had been walking the streets of Montreal’s Old Port only months before.

As late as the 1930s, U.S. war planners were still drawing up “worst-case scenario” schemes to conquer Canada

As late as the 1930s, U.S. war planners were still drawing up “worst-case scenario” schemes to conquer Canada.

War Plan Red, one of several colour-coded war plans created after the First World War, laid out plans for a full seizure of Canada to be kicked off with a poison gas attack on Halifax.

When prime minister Pierre Trudeau moved 10,000 soldiers into Montreal during the 1970 Front de libération du Québec crisis, U.S. troops were massed along the New York state border, according to Leslie Bennett, a former Mountie who worked in counter-espionage.

In 1985, Canadian suspicions were raised once again when the U.S. reactivated the 10th Mountain — a Second World War-era cold-weather fighting division — and based it in Fort Drum, N.Y., only an hour’s drive from Kingston, Ont.

“By their capability, the new forces at Fort Drum are a threat to Canada. They are assault troops designed to spearhead an attack. These are not defensive forces,” reads a summary of a 1993 lecture delivered by Floyd Rudmin, a Queen’s University law professor.

Canadian and U.S. officials dismissed his theory.

“Tell me, which Eskimo tribe [are] we are going to invade?” Eugene Carroll, a retired U.S. rear admiral, told the Toronto Star at the time.